Michelle Moquin's "A day in the life of…"

Good morning! Oops it is after noon…

How is everyone doing? I’ve been reading all of your comments and it’s inspiring to see the back and forth banter between all of you. I know many of you have asked me questions, or made comments to me, and I haven’t responded. This is nothing personal. I’ve decided to open our blog back up again and just be an observer for awhile. It’s been interesting taking a back seat, like a butterfly on the wall.

I do feel that I want to engage with all of you, however, so this silence won’t be forever. I have kept a running list of the comments and questions I would like to respond to so those will be addressed shortly. In the meantime, keep it going. I like what I’m reading.

I had a very late night out hence the late posting. So without further ado, here’s today’s write. I like it. I think you will too.

From Think Progress:

J.K. Rowling Shuts Down Backlash To ‘Black Hermione’

A black actress has been cast as Hermione in the upcoming “eighth” Harry Potter story, the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, prompting a firestorm on social media. Actor Jamie Parker has been cast as Harry Potter, Paul Thornley will play Ron Weasley, and Noma Dumezweni, an Olivier-award-winning actress born in Swaziland will play Hermione.

The play is an entirely new Harry Potter story penned by Rowling, following Harry’s troubles as an overworked government employee and father of three, including his son Albus Severus Potter — who is struggling under the weight of his family legacy (and, probably, his ridiculously grandiose name).

Although the real bombshell here ought to be that Paul Thornley, the actor playing notorious ginger Ron Weasley, doesn’t have red hair, it’s the casting of a woman of color as Hermione that has fans all a-twitter. In the books, Hermione’s main descriptors are her bushy hair and large teeth (pre Goblet of Fire, that is), but in the movies she’s played by Emma Watson — a white actress. Citing “continuity” — and their own images of “canon” Hermione as white — fans peppered J.K. Rowling with questions about the casting choice.

Her response:

She has since retweeted some fan art featuring a Hermione of color, and a tweet from Matthew Lewis, who played a brunette Neville Longbottom — pointing out that Neville was described in the books as blonde.

It’s not the first time Rowling has engaged in such debates on Twitter: In February, she favorited a Buzzfeed article by Harry Potter Alliance press coordinator Alanna Bennett, unpacking what the racebending of Hermione as biracial — as done by fanart, redditors, and the internet at large — represents.

It’s the very fact that Hermione’s race is so little discussed in the books that made this kind of speculation possible — bushy hair, which in the movies became Emma Watson’s sleek curls, could easily be kinky-curly, and the one time her skin is mentioned in Prisoner of Azkaban it’s described as “brown” after a summer holiday, which could mean anything. But it’s also the fact that her skin color isn’t mentioned that makes fans read it as white.

White is taken as the neutral race — which means if it’s not specified, the person is white. For decades, the ‘flesh‘ crayon was a peachy, pale color. The same went for ‘neutral’ pantyhose — they were only neutral for pale women. So when a book character isn’t described, we (or the filmmakers tasked with adapting the literary to the visual) often put a white face on them because that’s the culturally-created norm — and that’s a huge problem.

The same skewed normal dominates our fantasy worlds. We have imaginary universes populated with Jedi Knights, Hobbits, Elves, Starks and Lannisters, Witches and Wizards — but the vast majority of their inhabitants are white and Anglo-Saxon. High fantasy is highly homogeneous. It’s fantasy — people can be whatever we imagine — but somehow, they tend to end up Emma-Watson-white.

Even Rowling is complicit: In the Harry Potter books, generally, if a character is a person of color, that is made explicitly clear, as with Lee Jordan, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Cho Chang — all are at some point described by their ethnicity. Ron and Harry? Not so much.

Sometimes, characters end up white even if they’re described otherwise. The upcoming blockbuster Gods of Egypt would, presumably, star actual Egyptians, but instead its cast is almost entirely white. Lavender Brown was black in the first Harry Potter films, then recast as as a white actress when she had a speaking role. It barely made a ripple in terms of mainstream internet outrage. And, if people were truly concerned about canon and continuity, surely they would be equally outraged by the fact that the actor playing Ron in Cursed Child doesn’t have red hair, and that Harry — whose main literary trait is his bright green eyes — has blue eyes in all of the movies.

Every Single Word Spoken by a Person of Color in the Entire ‘Harry Potter’ Film Series

There are authors that are actively working against this. Junot Diaz’s books intertwine the immigrant experience with Spanish and Dune lines equally. Marlon James, this year’s Man Booker Prize winner, is planning on writing an “African Game of Thrones.” The new Star Wars brings some much-needed diversity to the franchise. And now, a talented black actress will bring Hermione to the stage. In the end, J.K. Rowling’s approval is an added bonus, because she still reigns supreme over the Harry Potter canon. But it’s not really the most important aspect of the announcement.

Hermione is a revolutionary female character. She’s smart, resourceful, and bossy — and never apologizes for any of that. And let’s be honest: Harry and Ron would have been toast without her. Even beyond that, though, she’s also a powerful face for discrimination in a book series that was literally about the rise of a racial hate group that wears pointy hoods. As a muggle-born, she faces taunts, discrimination, and even violence, like the Basilisk attack in the second book, based on her parentage. Now, black women will see themselves reflected as a strong, capable woman who owns her intelligence, and as a main character in a huge fantasy franchise to boot. And that is revolutionary.

*****

Readers: Love some of the tweets too.  It’s soo typical that no one says anything when white actors play non white parts in the movies – it is completely accepted – no one even questions it.  This has been going on…Helloo…forever.

No one questioned the difference between how Hermione was described in the book in comparison to the actress who played the part, Emma Watson. But the moment an OTW plays a part that many are envisioning should be played by a “white” person, all hell breaks loose.

Did you check out the video? Interesting too. Only 6 minutes and 18 seconds of the spoken script went to OTWs out of 19 hours and 39 minutes total of all the movies put together. Whoa, not much presence.

What are your thoughts about that? I wonder what Rowling would say about that stat. I’m sure she was well aware – How could she not be? Perhaps that is her reasoning for casting a black Hermione. Whatever her reasoning, I give kudos because it is a problem when the “white” race is taken as the “neutral” race…as the “norm,” the “expected.” White washing is done actively and subliminally and it takes  our awareness that this is a huge problem to address it and change it. One way to change it is through movies. So I hope this encourages more writers of the silver screen to follow suit.

Thoughts? Blog me. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

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“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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